Jungle Trip to Copataza

MAF plane ready to go.  Volcano "El Altar" in the background.

The summer, my favorite season, is coming to a close in the USA, and one of the things I missed about being gone this year was camping in the wilderness. Well, I wasn’t in the mountains of Central Idaho, but this past week gave me the opportunity to rough it Ecuador-style. Our hospital, which is run by HCJB, recently came to an agreement with Compassion International that allows us to perform the medical examinations for all their sponsored children in the jungle. In other words, the docs in our hospital will be making approximately 30 flights over the next several months into the deep parts of the Amazon Basin. The flights into most of the jungle communities are less than 60 minutes, but it is like entering a completely different world.

Over the Pastaza River.  Our airstrip can be seen in the distance.

Living in the jungle can be a treacherous proposition. As such, all indigenous folks team up with their families and close friends, find an area that has fertile soil, a water supply, and a plentiful supply of animals for hunting, and form a community. These places are mostly isolated from the outside world except for maybe a radio and an airstrip. Depending on the community, little planes may come in and out a few times a week, bringing in essentials such as toilet paper and Coca-cola, and carrying out stalks of bananas or other cargo.
Tuesday was my first turn to head into the jungle. The schedule at Alas de Socorro (the Ecuadorian branch of Mission Aviation Fellowship, or MAF) said that we would be going to an Achuar community called Copataza. Our mission: examine about 60 kids from Copataza and about 20 more from the neighboring community of Chumpi. I would be accompanied by Jonas, a Compassion worker with loads of experience in the jungle (having grown up there as a sponsored child), and Dr. Manuel Catani, one of our own hospital’s family medicine residents who is planning to go back to the jungle to work when he finishes his training.

Beautiful wildlife from deep in the jungle.

We loaded up the little airplane with our tents and some medicines, and we were off. It was a smooth flight of about 25 minutes over the sea of green that is the rainforest canopy. We landed in Copataza to find about 30 curious folks coming over to check us out. From the airstrip, we proceeded immediately to the central shelter in the community for a little 3-hour meeting. The purpose of the meeting was for us to introduce ourselves and our reason for being in the community, as well as to talk a bit about Copataza’s ambitions for the future. During the meeting we were being encouraged to partake of massive quantities of chicha, the ethnic drink that is made by chewing up a potato-like plant (yuca), spitting it into a bowl, and letting it ferment. Refusing to drink the chicha is an insult to the community. By the Lord’s mercy I survived that meeting without getting thoroughly ill, and we proceeded to unpack our bags in the wooden building that would serve as our clinic and home over the next two days.

Dr. Catani loves chicha.

A typical meal of fish and various types of potato-like roots.

The kids in the community were all pretty healthy, except that almost all of them measured a bit below the growth chart. From an early age kids learn to respect authority, and many of the kids practically refused to speak to me. Still, we got through the exams and had lots of fun with the children. The children’s parents were especially appreciative that someone was willing to fly in and show Christ-like compassion to their kids.
Other than the well child visits, we were able to attend to sore knees, sore hips, and sore other parts in many of the adults. Hard work in the jungle translates into arthritis later in life. Also, we had a couple of more emergent consults. On the second morning, an anxious husband knocked on our door and told us that his wife, who was four months-pregnant, had been bleeding. We immediately walked over to her hut to find that, sadly, she had already miscarried. When we asked to examine the baby to confirm that the miscarriage had been complete, grandma grabbed a machete and started digging a big hole in the floor of the hut. I turned to Dr. Catani and asked, “Do they bury all their dead inside the house?” “SÍ,” he replied. During that afternoon we were also called to see a lady who had been bitten by a bug whose name I didn’t recognize. However, she was suffering huge amounts of pain from the sting! It was nice to be able to provide her with medicines for pain and inflammation, and we saw her up and walking around a few hours later.

Kids waiting to be examined.

The highlight of the trip for me happened on the second night of our visit. Pedro, the Compassion International coordinator in Copataza, arranged to have a church service on that night. Pedro would lead the singing and we would deliver the message. So it happened that, with about two hours to prepare, I had my first opportunity to deliver a sermon in Spanish. Dr. Catani would translate from Spanish into the native tongue (this was also a nice way to give me a few seconds to think in between each sentence). Because of Compassion International’s influence in Copataza, most of them already had a pretty firm grasp of the basics of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So my challenge was to help them to dig a little deeper into a Biblical truth. We talked about Abraham, and how he was declared righteous by faith before God had given him the sign of circumcision. Circumcision was so important because it was one of the major signs that a person was a law-abiding Jew. The conclusion: it is by grace, through faith, that we are saved. We can’t be declared righteous by following a set of rules. Are we listening to God and living by faith, or are we trying to earn righteousness by doing “good works”?

Examining a precious little girl with asthma that is uncontrolled partly due to the fact that a cooking fire burns inside her house 24 hours per day.

On the final day we weren’t sure if we’d make it out of the jungle, as thunder storms began to approach us from the North. But, thankfully, the little MAF plane made it just in time and delivered us back home. I was excited to see my family and to give them big hugs! I was also energized by the opportunity to go deep into the jungle and to serve the poorest people in our region right in their own backyard. The effectiveness of child sponsorship was very evident in Copataza. The people there are constantly being reminded of how much Jesus loves them. Through the cooperation of several missions organizations (Samaritan’s Purse, HCJB, MAF, and Compassion International), I was blessed to be able to go to Copataza to be a part of the ministry. Please keep praying for all of us, as many more of these types of trips are yet to come!

Dr. Catani and Jonas standing outside of our house/clinic for the week

Jonas in front of a typical Ashuar house

"Let the little children come to me..."   -Jesus